Beyond the main entrance to the president's office in Hovde Hall is $380,000 in renovation work that Mitch Daniels, the incoming president, has questioned. / By Brent Drinkut/Journal & Courier

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If you’ve never had to wait for a new boss to arrive — one whose reputation doesn’t just proceed, but stomps out in front of him — then cut your friends on campus a little slack. It’s not much fun.

A new president at Purdue University, as it is, comes with a considerable amount of heft and uncertainty for anyone who figures to be in arm’s reach. And that’s when the handoff is from one president to the next without the six-month gap this time.

So with all due respect to Tim Sands, who set aside his role as provost to run the university after France Córdova made her exit in July, Purdue is hereby on hold until Mitch Daniels closes up shop at the governor’s office at the Statehouse in January and totes his boxes up to West Lafayette.

If campus wasn’t already on a new boss freak-out a week ago, it must be now.

If Daniels was miffed about what was being done in his future office without his say-so, he wasn’t letting on after initial reporting outlined restroom upgrades meant to meet federal accessibility requirements, installation of new lighting, carpet replacement and other repairs.

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By Tuesday, word of the project — worth roughly the same as three median-priced homes in Tippecanoe County — started to spread across the state. And it was punctuated by a headline in the Indianapolis Star that didn’t grease the sticky perception of the $380,000 bill in any way.

“Only the best for their man Mitch.”

Wow.

That’s when Daniels fired off what’s bound to be a legendary statement — one that ordered a stop to the work and that had Purdue types looking at their own places on campus and wondering what’s next.

“Nothing about my service in business or public life,” Daniels said, “suggests that I would initiate or condone a dollar of excessive or unnecessary spending on my account.”

How Daniels didn’t know about the work being done in his future office is still a bit of a mystery. For all of the times he’s been on campus for informal meetings to get a head start on the job, it’s hard to believe he didn’t peek into the second floor of Hovde Hall.

Still, as tea leaves go on his upcoming presidency, his statement was pretty specific. Or, as J. Paul Robinson, chairman of the Faculty Senate, told J&C reporter Eric Weddle last week: “I suggest before they spend too much more money that they read Mitch’s book, ‘Keeping the Republic.’ ”

This week, as Daniels heads to West Lafayette to meet with representatives of various colleges on campus, it’s worth reviewing: How much of his reputation as “The Blade” squares up with true cost cutting he touts in his book, and how much of it was simply driven by the necessity of a sour economy during much of his time in the Statehouse?

DeBoer allowed that “the ‘Great Recession’ created a lot of necessity.” Still, DeBoer lined up this down-economy comparison to put Daniels’ actions up against those of the two governors who came before him.

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“Govs. (Frank) O’Bannon and (Joe) Kernan faced the consequences of the 2001 recession, which had more severe effects on the state budget than on the economy,” DeBoer said. “Gov. Daniels faced the consequences of the 2007-09 recession, which was bad for the economy and the state budget.”

On DeBoer’s scorecard, the worst three years for O’Bannon and Kernan were 2001-03. Revenues were short of state appropriations by $3.4 billion. The Democratic administrations covered part of that by using up balances and part with $2.4 billion in adjustments. Of those adjustments, 48 percent were transfers from other funds, 22 percent were budget cuts and 30 percent were payment delays of various sorts.

What about Daniels’ worst three years? DeBoer said they were 2009-11, when revenues fell short of appropriations by $4.6 billion, out of a budget that included more K-12 education funding and was bigger than the ones a decade ago. The Daniels administration covered part of the shortfall with balances and federal stimulus money. Of $2.2 billion in adjustments, though, 11 percent were fund transfers, 90 percent were budget cuts and minus-1 percent was accounted for by settling early on payments that had been delayed.

“Gov. Daniels relied more on budget cuts to handle revenue shortfalls than did the O’Bannon/Kernan administration,” DeBoer said. “What Gov. Daniels would have done under happier revenue circumstances, we’ll never know. But given the economy he had, he appears to have been more of a ‘blade’ than his Democratic predecessors.”

What does that mean for Purdue?

For starters, it means there was a reason the Hovde Hall story and Daniels’ reaction to it had so much bounce last week. It means Daniels’ reputation is for real. It means the governor is going into his new job understanding that outward appearances, particularly on financial things, matter. It means that everyone on campus has reason to look at what they do and how it might fit in a year from now.

For now, though, consider it all on hold. Daniels is on the clock in January.